Hi all.
I know it’s been a long time. I do have one bit of positive news regarding the adoption paperwork. The social welfare office publicized Margarita’s photo and announcement stating that if anyone knows any info or the whereabouts of her biological parents to notify the authorities. Since her mother died and father is unknown, we don’t expect anyone to come forward. This is needed for the abandonment decree.
We’ve waited 5 months for that step. The bad news is that the family court in Tegucigalpa sent Margarita’s file to the court in Roatan, the island, because that is the jurisdiction since she was born there. The annoying portion of all of this is that the court sent her file to Roatan in April and nobody knew, neither my lawyer nor the person in the social welfare office who is handling the case. I continue to pray for patience…lots of it!
Margarita is doing good…well, she will have 2 great weeks of behavior and improvement and then have a set back of a day or two. Like this week, she misbehaved in school and at home so I made her walk around the Ranch and collect trash. Problem was that she enjoyed it. She was skipping around the grounds picking up wrappers and paper or the occasional soda bottle. I thought I had to get tougher with her punishment so I then had her sweep patios and walkways and wash a brick wall with a sponge. She didn’t enjoy that as much and seems like she learned her lesson.
Margarita loves the Montessori program that she attends plus she has a ½ hr of English everyday with a teacher from the U.S. Also she still has speech therapy once a week and ergotherapy for her coordination and balance. Once a week she also has religion class that I observed one day because I was curious and also wanted to know what they are teaching her. It was very simple, songs, the Lord’s Prayer and vocabulary of the items used during a mass that are placed on the altar.
What keeps me busy is work, motherhood, legal paperwork and meetings and the children here at the Ranch. Every week we have a different group of “chicas” come over for a few hours. We make popcorn, cake and dinner. Well, I made them Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and the chicas hardly took a bite. They looked at it like it was grubs! I thought to myself what kids don’t like mac and cheese? One of the chicas then asked me “ah Tia…what’s in the kitchen for dinner?” So I went down to the kitchen to get other food for them, laughing to myself. Well of course they want this dinner. It was cinnamon cookies, banana and strawberry cream of wheat.
I am fortunate that my work is very flexible. I usually start at 8:15am and end at 4:00pm. I have a babysitter pick Margarita up at school and then they walk up to our house. I do most of my work on-line, communicating with our international fundraising offices, mainly supplying them with on information on projects that need funding and info on our children and activities on the Ranch. For example, our chicken houses are 14 years old and are falling down. I get the plans and estimates from the engineer, take some photos and then upload that info to our intranet so the fundraisers can use it to look for donors. We haven’t had chicken in months because it’s too dangerous for our farm workers to be going in and out of the buildings and climbing the dilapidated ladders for the feeding system.
Also whenever anyone needs photos of anything, they call me, or design work. Another example is that the director of family service needed a brochure explaining our policies and procedures of new children, so I staged a bunch of scenario photos and designed a brochure that hopefully all the homes can use. (We have 8 other homes in Central America, South America and the Caribbean).
Every year I take a photo of each child, youth, for their godparents to receive during the holiday season. This year this process was extra special because the photos will be used by a non-profit in the U.S., called The Memory Project. Each one of our children will receive a portrait of themselves, painted by a high school student artist in the U.S. It takes about 9 months for the students to make the portraits so it won’t be till next year until the kids receive them.
Skz arrives on the 26th for 2 weeks! He’s agreed to walk Margarita down to school everyday and then go pick her up and watch her in the afternoons while I work. In total it will be about 3 miles of walking for him.
We also will go to the island for a few days so I can try and meet with the Judge and investigate what stage Margarita’s paperwork is at.
Please know that I think about all of you and I would love to here from you when you have time, even if it's just hello.
Hugs,
Monica
